I am 33 years old and just last week, finished paying for college (yes, that’s right–we made it! We paid off around $100,000 in college, car, and credit card debt. Read more about how we did it here). I got my first credit card when I was 18 years old and took out my first student and car loans when I was 20. For well over a decade, I have had these weights pressing down on me, steering me towards jobs that I had to take because I needed ANY paycheck, then spending money that I didn’t have in order to make myself feel better.

While it’s been an exciting week for us, I can’t help but look back at all of the money that has gone into paying off debt. It’s hard to fathom it when you’re taking out the loans–how in order to pay them off, you will bleed hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars of your salary each month. It’s hard to comprehend that the debt will steal your future ability to make the choices you want to make, and will instead force you to make choices out of necessity.

While I explained many of the mistakes that I made in previous posts about student loans, I think it’s also important to determine what they actually cost in the long run. Earlier this year, it was reported that student loan debt in the US has surpassed $1.3 trillion dollars. TRILLION (at least that means I wasn’t alone in my poor decision-making, right?). I know that personally, I went into it thinking that this is just how you pay for college and I’m going to get a good job and these won’t even be an issue. Over a decade later, I can see how wrong I was.

Here’s How Much a Loan Really Costs

To illustrate how a little student loan becomes a monster, allow me to share the fresh hell that was my own student loan repayment experience. This is one of my grad school loans that I took out through Sallie Mae (which later morphed into Navient).

Loan Type: Unsubsidized Stafford Loan

Original principal (original amount I took out): $4810

Interest rate: 6.8%

Date the loan was disbursed: 1/28/2008

Date I started repaying the loan: 8/29/2011

Loan repayment term: 10 years

When I started paying on the loan in August 2011, the principal balance of the loan had grown to $5344.97. That’s an additional $534.97 that literally paid for NOTHING. It did not pay for classes, or books, or supplies–it was just interest added to my loan before I even started paying on it. So first, for those of you who think that the loan company is being sweet by allowing you a “grace period” before you have to start making payments, don’t forget that interest is still building up during that time. In fact, when I look back at the payment history for this loan, my monthly payments didn’t start touching the principal balance of the loan until November 2012, over a year later.

If I plug the principal balance of $5344.97, the interest rate of 6.8%, and the repayment term of 10 years into a loan calculator, it tells me that I will pay a total of $7373.02 on this loan. So my original “small” loan of $4810 suddenly has $2563.02 in interest added on to it. If I take out 2 of those loans every semester (which I did, for the most part), you can see how they quickly add up and leave me as a college graduate with a very deep financial hole.

How to NOT End Up With $100,000 in Debt

Now that the math lesson is over, here are a few suggestions for how to avoid being a 33-year-old paying for decisions that you made when you still thought that ramen noodles and Gatorade constituted a well-balanced meal:

Avoid student loans like the plague: Get a side job. Work during the day and take classes at night. Go to a community college for the first two years of undergrad, then transfer. Go to a state school. Apply for every possible scholarship, even if it’s only $100. Start a 529 or other college savings account. Do whatever it takes to avoid taking out student loans in the first place.

If you’re already out of school, make a plan to pay them off as quickly as possible: Make a budget, then start attacking each student loan with extra payments. Once you pay off a loan (starting with the smallest one), roll that extra money into the next loan. Get them off your plate as early as possible so that you can avoid all of the extra interest payments, and begin enjoying the freedom of making decisions that aren’t based on how much money you owe.

When I started this blog, I released my secret goal to the world: be debt free (minus the mortgage) by 33! So exciting!

Nope.

Once it became clear that we wouldn’t quite hit that goal by my 33rd birthday, I revised it to: be debt free (minus the mortgage) by the end of 2016! We can do it! Go team!

Nope.

We had guests over on New Year’s Eve, and our friend took a look at our debt snowball chart on the fridge. She remarked about how well we were doing. All I could feel was the distance between the last $8700 and the finish line. We’d failed to reach our goal.

I have always been my own harshest critic (or at least I think I have. Maybe there’s someone out there who also enjoys keeping track of my failures. Weird hobby, though.) It’s easy for me to overlook my own successes and instead see where I’ve fallen short. We all do that to some degree. While it can be valuable to recognize your failures, it’s even more important to learn from them, then create a plan to either revise your goals or revise your approach.

If you, like me, missed your 2016 financial goals, then follow these steps to get back on track for 2017:

STEP ONE | Celebrate the progress that you HAVE made: We missed our goal by $8700. In the meantime, we paid off over $21,000 in debt last year. If someone else told me that they paid off that much debt in one year, I would congratulate them, not ask, “yeah loser, but how much do you have LEFT?”

STEP TWO | Do a financial goal post-mortem: Identify the why behind missing your goal. We had a few big unexpected expenses last year–a tree that needed to be cut down, hospital bills–but those were only part of the equation. We couldn’t control those. What we could control was our monthly budget. Every time we overspent, whether it was on groceries, going out to eat, clothes, or gifts for others, it moved us further from our goal.

STEP THREE | Check your budget: If you’re consistently missing the mark on your budget, check to see if your numbers are realistic. I’ve found that if I set a budget category too low, I inevitably overspend, and then for the rest of the month, very easily slide into a “oh well…might as well keep spending, since I’ve already missed the mark this month” mindset.

STEP FOUR | Set a new goal: Now that you’ve celebrated how far you’ve come, figured out why you missed your goal, and checked to make sure you were taking the best approach, it’s time to set a new goal. If that one big goal feels too big, try breaking it down into a few smaller “milestone” goals (instead of “pay off $20,000 by the end of this year,” try, “pay off $5,000 by the end of March.”) Breaking your big goal down into chunks might help you wrap your head around it.

STEP FIVE | Enlist support: Don’t keep your goal to yourself. By telling friends and family, having a shared goal with your spouse, or partnering with a friend, you create a source of accountability.

Tell me: what financial goals did you reach (or miss) last year? What are your financial goals this year?

Last month, when I went on my spender bender, I kind of snapped when it came to–well, everything. Not only was I tired of trying to save money in every way possible, but I was just tired. Really tired. Being a full-time working mom and wife is no joke.

In the midst of making it rain with our excess cash, I made a few financial decisions that we’re keeping in place for the time being. Let me preface this by saying: 1) if you go this route, talk with your spouse first. I didn’t, and I think my husband was slightly terrified and thought that I had started to lose my mind; and 2) only do what works within YOUR budget. Forget about what anyone else is doing.

Here’s what I added:

Blue Apron: Each weekend, I had spent a lot of time meal planning. I’d inventory our cupboards, fridge and freezer, search for recipes online, and make my grocery list. The whole process took a couple of hours. I decided to try out Blue Apron, which sends you all of the ingredients and recipes for 3 meals each week. The meals have all been really tasty and many of the recipes have been different from anything we would normally cook. It’s been a good chance to spend some quality time cooking with my husband and it’s removed the need to meal plan on the weekends. Better yet, it fits in to our weekly grocery budget. I have ingredients for the 3 nights of meals, then I only have to pick up odds and ends at the store. For the rest of our dinners, we just fill in with what we already have on hand.

YMCA Family Membership: I realized that I wasn’t taking care of myself–which probably contributed to the spender bender–so I changed my husband’s YMCA membership to a family membership. I’ve used it a ton already, and know that it’s helped me manage stress.

Cleaning Help: This one was hard for me. Growing up, my mom helped bring in money by cleaning someone else’s house. I used to go with her during the summer and help (or play their piano. Sometimes I’d actually be helpful). I never thought that I would hire someone to help clean my own home, but then it occurred to me–what if I just have someone come for 2 hours a week to do the big stuff (i.e. vacuuming, bathrooms, etc.)? With a baby, it literally takes me all weekend to get through those things. It has been WORTH IT. Waking up on Saturday and knowing that I actually get to enjoy my weekend has been awesome.

In order to make these three changes work for our family, we had to either make sure they fit within our existing budget or cut back in other areas. It took me a long time to get to this point, because even though I know that a budget should be flexible, I’ve been so focused on living as frugally as possible that it didn’t occur to me that we could fit lifestyle changes in without blowing the budget. If that means going out to eat less, or spending less money on clothes, then so be it!

If you have areas of your life where you could use a little help saving time or stressing less, I’d encourage you to look at your budget to see how you could work in some of those changes. You may not be able to afford Blue Apron, but what about signing up for a meal planning service, like eMeals? If a YMCA membership doesn’t work, what about going to a yoga class once of twice a month? Figure out what you need, then make it work with what you’ve got.

I didn’t write any posts in September. It wasn’t because I didn’t have time; it’s because I was embarrassed. Over the summer, I had written about how we have paid off almost all of our non-house debt. Then about a month ago, I hit a wall. Even though I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to treat myself and not think about money. I felt tired of seeing other people buy new clothes. I wanted to go out to eat more than once a month and go to the non-Aldi grocery store to buy whatever I felt like buying. I wanted to go to the movies with my husband and decorate my home. I wanted to buy my daughter new books and clothes because darn it, she’s so cute. My friends, I went on a spender bender.

At first, it felt pretty good. It’s been a long time since I spent that much money on myself. As the month went on though, it stared to feel a little uncomfortable. Then the guilt started to set in. Sure, the dates with my husband were fun, but that’s really because of the time we spent together, not because of the locations. The clothes that I had bought are just clothes now- not nearly as exciting as the day that I purchased them. My daughter still looks cute in her new clothes, but I could wrap her in a garbage bag and she’d look adorable.

So, lesson learned (again). No matter how much money you spend, any happy feelings that you derive from your purchases will be temporary. It’s all just stuff.

Luckily, I managed to get my head screwed on straight around the end of the month and recommitted myself to paying off the rest of our debt. Just yesterday, we made the final payment on my student loans. For the first time in almost 15 years, I have no student loans or car loans in my name. We have one student loan left in my husband’s name and then WE ARE DONE with non-house debt.

So for all of you out there who feel like you keep screwing up- it’s ok. Fix it, then move forward. When you screw up again (as most of us do), fix it, and move forward again. You’ve got this.

Confession time: I have a bad budget habit. Every month, I set aside a certain amount for groceries and EVERY MONTH, I go over budget. When I sit down before the beginning of each month, I plan to keep the grocery number as minimal as possible. At the end of every month, I find myself frustrated with how much we actually spent–we typically run out of money in that category around the third week of the month.

Why not just put more money in there? you might ask. That would be the obvious solution. But that assumes that this process is a logical one. Money is so strongly tied to emotion for me, that when there’s not enough, I feel uneasy and scared. Our goal of paying off all non-house debt is so deeply intertwined with my emotions at this point, that anything standing in the way of it feels stressful. So when I sit down to budget, I put down an optimistic number (RE: too little) for groceries, rather than a more practical one. Then when we inevitably run out of money in week 3, it starts to feel something like, oh well, we blew it. Might as well keep spending. Better luck next month. And that’s how we end up hundreds of dollars over budget.

If you are in the same boat as me, whether it’s your grocery budget, your entertainment budget, or something else, here are a few steps that we can take to set more realistic goals:

Don’t assume next month will be the same as this month: Look at the entire month ahead. Will you need extra food for a party? Are you going out of town? Will you need to replace anything? Try to plan ahead for as many “knowns” as possible.

Look at your spending history: If you generally spend an average of $125 a week on groceries, don’t put only $100 in the budget. Either figure out how to cut back, or make sure you have enough reserved in that category.

Split the monthly budgeted amount up by week: I’ve found that I spend less when I take out enough cash for 1 week at a time, rather than focusing on the amount I have for the entire month.

If you read my last post, then you know that I amassed a pretty serious amount of student loan debt. While some students are wise enough to understand the future implications of taking out loans, many are blind about what a personal budget actually looks like (I certainly was), and how a student loan payment fits in.

EXAMPLE: Post-College Budget

Assume that you graduate with $40,000 in student loan debt, with a 5% interest rate and a 10-year repayment plan. Luckily, you get a job with a starting salary of $50,000. To a college grad who may have only worked hourly jobs in the past, that probably sounds great.

Let’s break down your paycheck first. After state and federal taxes are taken out, you have about $35,000 left as your take home pay, or about $2917 per month. Your student loan payment is about $430/month.

Here are your other anticipated monthly expenses:

Expense

Monthly Amount

Rent

$800

Utilities

$150

Car Payment

$250

Gas

$200

Car Insurance

$100

Groceries

$400

Cell Phone

$125

Cable/Internet

$150

Entertainment/Misc.

$200

TOTAL EXPENSES BEFORE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT:

$2375

Now tack on your student loan payment of $430:

$2375 + $430 = $2805 in total monthly expenses

If you stick to your exact budget, that leaves you with $112. Still ahead of the game, right? Well, what if…

…your apartment rent goes up?

…you have to pay for parking at work?

…the transmission goes out on your car?

…you want to go on a vacation?

…you decide to go to graduate school?

…you want to buy new clothes for work?

…you are invited to be in a friend’s wedding?

All of a sudden, your budget starts to feel much tighter. $112 feels like pennies. A credit card begins to look like your best option for meeting all of your short-term wants and needs, and you can’t even begin to think about saving for a house, or retirement, or…anything.

Is that the life that you want? Probably not. But if you do the leg work ahead of time–you apply for scholarships and work during the school year; you go to community college for 2 years, then transfer or you choose a state school instead of a private school; you live at home and commute or find the cheapest college apartment you can–you know what that does for your budget? That leaves you with $542 at the end of each month, instead of $112. Over the course of a year, that’s over $6500, and THAT is how you begin to live the life you want after college.

I loved college. I lived with a fantastic roommate who is still a close friend and I even met my husband there. I learned a lot and still have fond memories of that time in my life. I’ve also spent more than a decade paying for it.

Before I share my mistakes, here are the things that I did right:

I took college courses in high school. They were general education classes (English, French, etc.) that knocked out a few of the required classes I would have otherwise had to take my freshman year. It was also cheaper to take them while in high school.

I went to community college for my first two years, even though I had good grades in high school. During that time, I worked several jobs to pay for school and I lived at home. I also took summer classes in order to finish in a year and a half so that I could work for a semester before transferring to a 4-year college.

I chose to finish my bachelor’s degree at a state school. It was a very highly-regarded school in a small, semi-rural town (Its nickname is “Harvard of the Cornfields.” I kid you not).

That all sounds great, right? Well, if you’ve read some of my other posts, including this one about paying off almost $100,000 in debt, then you know that I still ended up with a massive amount of student loan debt. Some of that was from graduate school loans, but a great deal of it was from my last two years of undergrad. Looking back, I wish I could give myself a solid roundhouse kick, a la Chuck Norris, because…

Here’s what I didn’t do right:

I didn’t apply for scholarships. At the time, I made every excuse in the book: it took too much time to apply, there were too many people applying and I would never be chosen, the amount for a particular scholarship was too little to matter, etc. But you know what? It takes a lot more time to pay off student loans. I had good grades, was involved in extracurricular activities, and could write a decent essay. And $500 IS NOT A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY (in 2003, that would have bought me at least one semester’s worth of books).

I didn’t get a job while I was at school. Although I did work when I came home during breaks, I chose not to get a job during the school year. I believe it had something to do with “cramping my style” (a.k.a. “preventing me from being able to go out with my friends.”) I also didn’t save any of the money that I earned during breaks, nor did I use it towards tuition or books (see: “going out with friends”). Between the hours that I worked during the holidays and the summer, I could have easily paid for a semester of classes.

I didn’t plan my classes well. I originally went to school to become a teacher. Imagine my surprise when, while planning my classes for what I thought was my last year of college, I realized that student teaching would add an extra semester. If I had planned out my strategy on day one, I could have loaded up a couple of extra courses throughout the two years, maybe taken one or two summer classes, and graduated on time. Instead, I had to pay for an extra semester.

I took out the full amount in student loans. Instead of taking out just enough to pay for classes, books, room, and board, I took out every last penny. After tuition was paid, I used the rest of the money to rent an overpriced apartment and to pay for groceries, going out, clothes, and anything else I wanted.